ThoughtRiver secures £7.6 million Series A investment led by Octopus Ventures

ThoughtRiver secures $10M funding to support global expansion as lawyers look to automate contracting and accelerate deal velocity

  • Octopus Ventures leads Series A funding for Cambridge-founded legal tech company
  • Company growth accelerates during pandemic as leading corporates choose ThoughtRiver to help drive deal velocity

London, UK. September 8th 2020ThoughtRiver, the market leader in automated contract review and pre-screening, has today announced $10M (£7.5M) in Series A funding. The round is led by Octopus Ventures, a leading European venture capital firm which invests in technology innovation leaders.

The investment comes after ThoughtRiver achieved record growth over the past twelve months. It recently signed contracts with some of the world’s leading companies, including giants such as G4S, Singtel, and DB Schenker. ThoughtRiver also signed a strategic partnership with PwC, enabling the professional services firm to develop a proposition for its clients and the broader market, powered by ThoughtRiver software.

ThoughtRiver’s automated contract review software has become essential for firms looking to accelerate the process of reviewing, negotiating, and signing contracts to drive deal velocity. These firms can also now make critical business decisions informed by data from their black book of contracts, as surfaced by ThoughtRiver.

ThoughtRiver already has offices in New York, Singapore, London, Cambridge and Auckland, and will now focus even harder on growing US market share, scaling its sales and marketing efforts, and rolling out further integrations with major technology partners. As part of the company’s continued international development, ThoughtRiver recently announced the appointment of Michael Lisowski, formerly COO and divisional President at Ascential plc, as Chief Operating Officer.

Akriti Dokania, Early Stage Investor at Octopus Ventures, commented:

“While the legal sector has been slow to adopt AI compared to other industries, ThoughtRiver has a proven business model based on solving a fundamental issue for lawyers. By using an advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine to drive faster contract reviews and acceleration of deal flow and business growth, legal professionals can work more efficiently than ever. We are thrilled to support the ThoughtRiver team with its plans for global expansion as the firm disrupts an established market and set of processes.”

ThoughtRiver CEO Tim Pullan, named by the Financial Times as one of the world’s top 10 legal technologists in 2019, commented:

“To receive this investment in the current climate is testament to the relevance of ThoughtRiver’s technology, when across the globe, businesses are looking to do more with less. More efficient commerce is driven by faster contract review, and the pressure to optimise legal operations has never been greater. We look forward to using this investment to get our technology out to lawyers across all organisations, helping them accelerate business deals and at a broader level, facilitate economic growth.”

Octopus Ventures led the Series A round supported by existing ThoughtRiver seed investors CraneLocal Globe, Entrée Capital, Syndicate Room, and angel investor Duncan Painter.

A recent Gartner study (Legal and Compliance Automation Study – 2019) found that the number one ask of the legal department by other members of executive management is to increase speed, and ThoughtRiver delivers just that.

ENDS

About ThoughtRiver

ThoughtRiver is a legal tech company that addresses a fundamental problem for in-house counsels and lawyers: you don’t know whether you need to read a contract without reading it. ThoughtRiver’s contract pre-screening technology uses machine learning and legal intelligence to automate the initial scan and analysis of contracts to produce an actionable recommendation on what to do next with the contract – and why. This is similar to a manual checkpoint review, only faster and provides an organisation-wide view of all contractual risk. Headquartered in Cambridge, ThoughtRiver works with in-house legal teams, general counsels and law firms, and is funded by LocalGlobe and Crane Ventures. Find out more: www.thoughtriver.com   

About Octopus Ventures

Octopus Ventures helps pioneers change the world. The pioneers we back dare to reimagine the future of health, money and deep tech.

With £1.3 billion under management, Octopus Ventures is one of the largest VCs in Europe. Our typical investment is from £1 million for Seed to £10 million for Series B and we can follow our investment from a few hundred thousand right up to £25 million.

Our team is based in London and New York with Venture Partners in San Francisco, Singapore and China. The companies we back become a part of this network, with access to a formidable resource of experience and expertise.

Octopus Ventures has backed the founding teams of nearly 100 companies including Zoopla, Secret Escapes, Elvie, Depop, Sofar Sounds and Cazoo. Some of our portfolio companies have gone on to join forces with the world’s largest businesses including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Twitter.

Our investment team is focused on the three areas we believe have the most potential to change the world for the better:

  • Future of Health – Backing pioneers who are transforming the health industry from digital therapeutics through to biotechnology
  • Future of Money – Backing pioneers who seek to vastly improve society’s ability to exchange and allocate financial resources and risk
  • Deep Tech – Focusing on the tools and technologies that will power the next industrial revolution. These include quantum computing, robotics and drones, sensory human augmentation and 3D printing

Media contacts:

For press enquiries, please contact Edward Clark at:[email protected] // 0203 697 6680


Further Reading:

Our investment in ThoughtRiver by Octopus Ventures

Manoj Ranaweera

Manoj has founded, failed and successfully exited from a number of technology product companies as well as support organisations since 2004. Among them, Northern Tech Awards and edocr.com were acquired by GP Bullhound and Accusoft, Inc respectively. Today, Manoj is building a trusted support network for technology companies. He is working with founding teams to help them accelerate including raising investment and M&A.

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